Police officer falls from bridge, dies

By Christine Byers and Celeste Bott St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Tuesday

Oct 30, 2018 at 12:01 AM

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (TNS) — A Washington Park, Ill., auxiliary police officer died after jumping over a concrete barrier during a chase on the Poplar Street Bridge, apparently not realizing there was a 50-foot drop on the other side.

Ricardo Davis, 44, was taken to a hospital after the fall Saturday, and was later pronounced dead. A father of six, Davis wasn’t paid for his position as an auxiliary officer. The role serves as a pipeline to employment as a full Washington Park officer, but he needed to graduate from a police academy first. He was set to begin academy work in two weeks.

Police arrested two 19-year-old men Davis had been chasing.

The chain of events began when a Washington Park officer tried to stop a Chevrolet with the two men inside about 5 p.m. It wasn’t clear what prompted the attempted traffic stop in East St. Louis.

The vehicle didn’t pull over. The men led police on a chase to westbound Interstate 64, where the Chevrolet sideswiped several cars before crashing on the Poplar Street Bridge, said Illinois State Trooper Calvin Dye Jr.

After crashing, the suspects got out and ran, and Davis was among several officers running after them. Other officers involved in the chase said Davis had jumped over other concrete barriers safely during the pursuit, Dye said. But the third barrier he attempted to clear did not have a platform beneath it and led to his fatal 50-foot fall.

Davis fell to dry land on the Illinois side of the river. He was taken to a hospital with multiple broken bones and internal bleeding, Dye said. He later died from his injuries.

A woman who said she witnessed the crash told KTVI (Channel 2) that the suspects swiped her van, eventually crashing into the back of her brother’s car before running away. She told reporters she saw the officer fall from a median of the bridge, and later saw ski masks, firearms and drugs inside the suspects’ car.

The suspects were arrested, but no information on charges was available. One was from Centralia, Ill., the other from East St. Louis, police said.

No one else was injured during the pursuit. Illinois State Police are continuing to investigate the incident.

Christopher Davis, a brother of Ricardo Davis, said he and other family members were with his brother at the hospital Saturday night thinking he only had a broken leg. Within 20 minutes of their arrival, he became unresponsive because of internal injuries and could not be revived, Christopher Davis said.

Ricardo Davis grew up in East St. Louis, and graduated from East St. Louis Junior High School. He was the youngest of three brothers who went into law enforcement. His older brothers are both St. Clair County Sheriff’s deputies.

Christopher Davis said his younger brother came to police work later in life, and instead worked mostly security jobs. Then, a few years ago, Davis went to work for the Brooklyn police. But he didn’t pass some of his exams in the police academy and the Brooklyn police department would not pay for him to try to complete the academy program again.

He applied to Washington Park, and was set to begin the academy in two weeks on their dime, his brother said.

Washington Park Officer Taneisha Diggs, whose aunt is the mother of three of Davis’ children, said Davis rode with her during one of her recent night shifts in the town of about 3,900 people. The department has eight full-time officers and a smaller number of auxiliary officers, she said.

“It meant a lot because he wasn’t even getting paid to do that,” she said. “He just said, ‘I got you, I ain’t leaving you.’”

She said she recently taught him to do the kind of situps that are acceptable at the academy.

“The last time I saw him he said, ‘I’ll see you at the graduation.’ And now we never will.”

Diggs joined Davis’ brothers, Christopher and Romero Davis, and about 100 other people for a candlelight vigil Sunday outside the Gas Mart in East St. Louis where Davis worked as a security officer for the past two years.

Officers from Centreville, East St. Louis and Washington Park also attended the vigil, and remarked about how some of the people who attended were people Davis had chased away from the gas station.

“That’s just the kind of officer he was,” said Washington Park Officer Cedric Gooden, 25. “He had their respect.”

Romero Davis said he knows his younger brother looked up to him, but he feared for him in police work.

“I was telling him after things didn’t work out in Brooklyn that he should go into something else,” Romero Davis said. “But honestly I think I was just trying to find him an exit more for myself than for him.”

Romero Davis said he knew how focused his brother must have been on the suspect he was chasing on the night he died.

“He wanted to be the guy that got the bad guy,” he said.

Davis also worked security at Lovejoy Elementary School. Shalonda Johnson, 27, of Venice, said he was a mentor to many there.

“A lot of kids at that school don’t go to class and skip school, but he would push them to go to school,” she said.

One of those kids was Johnson’s cousin, who started skipping school as a freshman in 2015. One time, Johnson recalled, a truancy officer was headed to her home, but Davis beat him there and demanded that the girl get in his car and go back to school immediately. He then helped her with her homework when she had to take summer classes to catch up and graduate on time.

“She did, and barely missed a day of school after that,” Johnson recalled.